 Poster: A snowHead
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weeSKI, Put it on the internet (facebook/flickr etc), right click the picture and select properties, copy the url. Come back here, clich the img button, paste the url in, click img again.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| snowball wrote: |
| It makes me wonder how many US skiers understand that off piste is not avalanche controlled in Europe - . |
Short answer? Many don't (understand the danger).
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| and whether they know if their insurance covers them off piste here. |
Majority of American skiers don't carry skiing specific insurance, period.
So on piste or off-piste makes no difference.
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| however, except in a few places like Chamonix and La Grave new snow doesn't get tracked out as fast, and in many resorts (such as Montgenevre last week) there are hardly any tracks off piste - even right under the lifts. |
I do wonder if that's partly due to the true off-piste loving skiers had gone off with guides to somewhere far away from the lift!
The habit of many European off-piste skies to budget for guide fees and booking guides before they even leave home would means even on days when there's plenty of easy off-piste under the lift, those who wish to ski it may not be there to take advanatage of it.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Just a comment on the American vs European slope managemet systems. The American system where all the in bounds, off piste is avalanche managed actually evolved way before the present law suit situation evolved and is very much the same as in New Zealand where it is almost impossible to sue the ski area company. It appears to be more a philosophy of service difference than a legal responsibility issue. Kind of like "I took you up the mountain so I will ensure you come back down the mountain" It does make it a lot easier to learn to ski ungroomed snow if you do not have to worry about the avalanche danger but may lead to some people not learning the skills to be safe in the unmanaged terrain.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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pinhead, When I ducked under the fence with an american instructor a couple of years ago he informed me that it would be a misdemeanor in the Colorado and we would be fined $1,000 .  We actually have 2,200m of pisted vertical here or 7,260'. While there are perhaps not many resorts in Europe with quite so much vertical as LDA there are a good few with more than 1500m or 4950'. As Swirly, was saying about La Grave, I don't think any but the strongest skiers would be able to lap even the Vallons de la Meije
It's wierd, I'm always hearing that LDA doesn't have many blacks - actually there are a staggering number of steep lines to be had from lifts, but only 4 of the 8 marked blacks are pisted on any sort of regular basis. Others are either too steep or left to mogul on purpose ... however snowball, the accessible off piste gets tracked out mostly on the first day. Shame we have so many freeriders living here  I suppose there must be a reason. 
I can't compare with the States, but the americans I've met either here or La Grave have been totally blown away.
saikee, I don't understand why you wouldn't ski ungroomed runs just because of your age.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Ok here's the image that Remi used to illustrate 55/60 degree slopes
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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easiski,
I always accompany the wife in skiing and she doesn't like moguls so I have to stay away too. I am getting her to have a go from time to time but the progress is painfully slow.
We normally do a 2-week skiing holiday and have to preserve the legs to last that long. In our current trip we have 18 consecutive skiing days. The heavy snow has forced us to rest for two days so far.
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Here's it simple:
The terrain is just as challenging at European and American resorts. Just Europe isn't avvy controlled and have only a select few marked groomed runs running down an enormous mountain. The rest of that is called off piste. In NA, they classify all this terrain with trails and avvy control. In Europe, you're on your own.
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I have to clarify that the "extreme terrain" is not double diamond black but one grade more difficult. A normal double black diamond run has two diamond sign. An extreme terrian run is depicted with also two black diamonds but with "E" and "X" printed inside the diamonds.
Among the 9 colorado resort trail maps only Aspen explains the meaning of extreme terrain and that explanation was showed in Post #1.
Interestingly the Aspen Highland bowl has 18 double black diamond runs with only one shown as an extreme terrian. Only 2 of the 18 double black diamond has a maximum gradient 38 degrees while the rest has a range between 40 to 45 degrees. The average pitch of these 18 runs ranges between 33 to 40 degrees. From the "Ski North America - the ultimate travel guide" the Aspen Highland Bowl was allowed to open in 1981 until 3 ski patrollers got killed in 1984. Thereafter the bowl was closed for 13 years. It was reopened in 1997. From the peak the fall line has a pitch of up to 48 degrees and is considered as a prime avalanche terrain. To ensure safety it has been reported that in the early season after a new snow fall volunteers descend the bowl and compress the snow step by step as they walk up and down the mountain.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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saikee,
skiking4 sums it up pretty nicely.
Take the same mountain and put it on both side of the pond, you'll find black, double black and "extreme" doubles in N. America. While on the European side, it would be a few black pistes with vast mountain side as "off-piste"!
The mountain can be the same, just the markings are approached differently.
In N. America, the ski patrol will open/close avi potential terrain. In Europe, it's the guides that would do the same, by taking you to safe terrain and avoiding the ones likely to slide.
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| saikee wrote: |
Among the 9 colorado resort trail maps only Aspen explains the meaning of extreme terrain and that explanation was showed in Post #1.
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I've never seen extreme terrain marked as a separate level at any US or Canuckistani trail maps I've eseen so I'd suspect its some sort of bizarre Aspen marketing ploy - "Look how rad we are, our terrain goes up to 11. It's one louder."
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| fatbob wrote: |
| I've never seen extreme terrain marked as a separate level at any US or Canuckistani trail maps I've eseen so I'd suspect its some sort of bizarre Aspen marketing ploy - "Look how rad we are, our terrain goes up to 11. It's one louder." |
No, it's not unique to Aspen.
Many American mountains uses that. Telluride does, for example. So does Breckenridge. But the "standard", if there's any, isn't clear. It's well known the "double black" in one resort might be easier than the single black in another. Alta, for example, designate all of its advance terrain as a simple, single black diamond. So such terrain can range from merely steep to very steep with rock bands neccessitate jumping!  I must admit I, as many others, wish there's seperate marking of single vs. double black, if not the extra finer designation of "extreme" terrains (I should say "routes").
I didn't sample the "extreme" terrain in Telluride due to poor snow condition making the mere double black more difficut than I care to tacle. In Aspen, one of the "extreme" piste I looked at reminds me the inside of a verticle ventilation shaft!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| abc wrote: |
saikee,
skiking4 sums it up pretty nicely.
Take the same mountain and put it on both side of the pond, you'll find black, double black and "extreme" doubles in N. America. While on the European side, it would be a few black pistes with vast mountain side as "off-piste"!
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For a little bit more info, here's an example:
Chip's Run at Snowbird, a blue traverse trail. Surrounded by a ton of ungroomed trails, like The Cirque, Baldy Traverse, Silver Fox, among others.
Now take the red piste descending from Col des Gentianes down to La Chaux around the Jumbo cable car area at Verbier. A red traverse trail. Surrounded by tons of off piste, like the terrain from the ridge of Mont Fort to Bec des Roses, and other places I don't know the name of or just don't have a name.
On the map, you have Chip's Run look long and going down the entire mountain surrounded by tons of blacks and double blacks. For Verbier, you have this one lonely red piste looking miniature in comparison to the rest of the mountain. Yet both terrain areas are about the same size. If you were to remove all the ungroomed trails at Snowbird and are left with just Chip's Run, the actual terrain would not change, only the map. That's sort of what Europe is about.
Hopefully that came out clear...
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If a run isn't groomed it will be identified as a "ski route" which doesn't appear popular to the extent as an essential feature of a resort.
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You've obviously never been to verbier then...take a look at Tortin, Mont Gele, Gentianes, Cold des Mines etc etc, loads of people on ungroomed itineraries, which are marked on the ski maps and in some cases with marker poles..
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You know it makes sense.
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| abc wrote: |
| snowball wrote: |
| however, except in a few places like Chamonix and La Grave new snow doesn't get tracked out as fast, and in many resorts (such as Montgenevre last week) there are hardly any tracks off piste - even right under the lifts. |
I do wonder if that's partly due to the true off-piste loving skiers had gone off with guides to somewhere far away from the lift!
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Actually no. The slope under the lift I'm thinking of was before our guide arrived, but we skied slopes with the guide which nobody else did all the week (I'm thinking of one which was very much in view from some of the lifts - but it did call for expert knowledge on avalanche danger from the guide).
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| abc wrote: |
Take the same mountain and put it on both side of the pond, you'll find black, double black and "extreme" doubles in N. America. While on the European side, it would be a few black pistes with vast mountain side as "off-piste"!
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However part of that in America will be in-bounds and the rest out of bounds. The total area of in-bounds at Jackson Hole (which Americans consider huge) is quite small by European off-piste standards.
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Poster: A snowHead
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snowball, in the case of Montgenevre I wonder if it's the proximity to Italy, where less people seem to ski off piste in general, certainly the stuff close to the lifts there tracks significantly slower than that in L2A, Serre Che and Alpe D'Huez. Although there was a day last season where everyone was skiing off piste in Claviere. There had been a massive dump 2 nights before and many lifts had stayed shut the previous day due to massive avvy risk. At the time it was really hot and sunny so the untracked stuff formed a layer of completely unbreakable crust: you didn't even leave a slight track on this stuff it was like someone had groomed the trees but without the corduroy. It took till about half 12 until one of us finally broke through at which point we went for lunch while it turned to corn. After that everyone else was back on piste so we went round and tracked it all.
Even the day before there wasn't that many people out, we only saw us and two groups with guides from the skiers lodge all skiing very mellow stuff through the trees. Mind a lot of La Grave locals would have been skiing the derby that day, interestingly they only got about 1 cm of snow; Montgenevre had at least 80 cm.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Swirly wrote: |
| snowball, in the case of Montgenevre I wonder if it's the proximity to Italy |
Yes, absolutely.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| abc wrote: |
| It's well known the "double black" in one resort might be easier than the single black in another. |
That's a really important point to understand if you ski across the pond. Every North American trail map that I've seen contains a small-print warning that gradings are relative to other runs in that resort. It's therefore entirely possible that a skier who's entirely comfortable with runs in one resort could struggle with similarly graded runds in another.
Given that I'm normally skiing with my kids, I always spend a couple of days familiarising myself with a new mountain before launching into the double diamonds.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| abc wrote: |
| Quote: |
| and whether they know if their insurance covers them off piste here. |
Majority of American skiers don't carry skiing specific insurance, period.
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So most US skiers are automatically insured to ski backcountry and be rescued from there? I must say that surprises me.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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May not be insured for being patched up after the rescue though!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Search and rescue here (california) is covered by your taxes and lift tickets. Usually there is no charge unless fraud is involved. Even stupidity is covered if you didn't know better. Once you see a doctor then your health insurance is needed but not before.
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| Jonny Jones wrote: |
| abc wrote: |
| It's well known the "double black" in one resort might be easier than the single black in another. |
That's a really important point to understand if you ski across the pond. Every North American trail map that I've seen contains a small-print warning that gradings are relative to other runs in that resort. It's therefore entirely possible that a skier who's entirely comfortable with runs in one resort could struggle with similarly graded runds in another. |
Yes, the fine prints always say that. Though in reality, the grading of green & blue (European blue/red) are reasonably consistant across the continent.
It's when it comes to black/double/triple/extreme when it gets tricky:
- Some resorts don't subscribe to double/triple/exteme notation! (Alta being one of such, I think JH also.) So a single black can cover a very broad range of difficulty.
- Some resorts only have singel vs double. So double blacks can go from "very difficult" to insane (Heavenly from my vague recollection)!
- Some resorts such as Aspen, Telluride etc, breaks the advance terrain into finer classes of single/double/ext terrains. All it does is "narrow down" the definition of blacks and double blacks to be something of increasingly (but managable) difficulty for advance skiers, leaving the triple/ex catagory to be open for intepretation!
There's no uniform standard for any creative marking schemes beyond a single black diamond. Each resort is free to define their own way of warning the punter of life-threatening routes. What all of this really means is the top catagory CAN BE anything you shouldn't do unless you either 1) are very skill to survive ANY skiable terrain, or 2) you have inspected the terrain in question and make your own determination that you CAN in fact safely ski it. More over, when it comes to "advanced" terrain, each individual skier will have favors and nemesis. One skier might happily charge down 50 degree open slopes full of house size mogul but would not get near any trees, while another might gracefully dance through tight trees yet refuse even the smallest jump of no more than 1/2 metre!
What a lot of infrequent skier don't seem to manage to grasp is the "current condition" bits. When there's fresh snow (groomed or not), pratically any brave 3rd week skiers can ski down many of double black pistes. But when it hadn't snowed for 2 weeks, and there had been a warm day melting the snow which then refreeze, it would challenge even an advance skier to tackle some of the "single black" route in places like Jackson Hole.
Those who had skied off-piste for a few season will eventually learn to discount (or put into proper prospect) the marking systems as more of a "general guide line" rather than a "calculated certainty".
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abc, jh has double blacks.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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It is a bit like wine bottle labels, the French just don't know how to sell their pistes
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| Jonny Jones wrote: |
| abc wrote: |
| It's well known the "double black" in one resort might be easier than the single black in another. |
That's a really important point to understand if you ski across the pond. |
Or anywhere else.
There is little (if any) more in the way of consistency between resorts in Europe than there is in North America.
And awful lot of resorts seem to work on the basis of "Right, we'd better have some blues (greens in France), or we won't get beginners. So we'll make the easiest runs in the resort blue, even if they would be red in some resorts. Now, we need a few blacks as well, so we'd better make the hardest few into blacks. The rest can be reds."
I believe there are guidelines in some countries saying that they must take the steepest part of the run, and if that is below x degrees, it is blue, above y degrees it is black, otherwise red - but those are only guidelines, and anyhow don't take account of things like width/obstacles/odd cambers etc. which affect the difficulty.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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At Kitzbuhel, Val D'Isere, and Verbier, I don't think I've ever skied a marked route that would definitely be classified as a double black out west (talking generally, of course). "Piste S" (due to length) and "Paquerettes" (maybe too short) in the Espace Killy could be close, as well as the Mont Gele Tortin route (maybe due to cliffs if you head straight down the bowl and length) and Valon D'Arby (really depends on your route) in Verbier. Otherwise, runs like Gentianes and Chassoure Tortin or Mont Fort at Verbier, Diressitima at Kitzbuhel, La Face de Bellevarde, Epaule du Charvet or 3000 at the Espace Killy probably wouldn't qualify as a double black in the Rockies, Wasatch, or Tahoe.
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